No one knows if the IMF director is guilty of sexual assault—and by dragging him through the mud, politicians and the press are committing gross acts of injustice, says French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.
Daily Beast/ May 15, 2011
I do not know what actually happened Saturday, the day before yesterday, in the room of the now famous Hotel Sofitel in New York.
I do not know—no one knows, because there have been no leaks regarding the declarations of the man in question—if Dominique Strauss-Kahn was guilty of the acts he is accused of committing there, or if, at the time, as was stated, he was having lunch with his daughter.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is arraigned in Manhattan criminal court in New York, U.S., on Monday, May 16, 2011. (Richard Drew, Pool / AP Photo) I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.
And I do not want to enter into considerations of dime-store psychology that claims to penetrate the mind of the subject, observing, for example, that the number of the room (2806) corresponds to the date of the opening of the Socialist Party primaries in France (06.28), in which he is the uncontested favorite, thereby concluding that this is all a Freudian slip, a subconsciously deliberate mistake, and blah blah blah.
What I do know is that nothing in the world can justify a man being thus thrown to the dogs.
What I know is that nothing, no suspicion whatever (for let’s remind ourselves that, as I write these lines, we are dealing only with suspicions!), permits the entire world to revel in the spectacle, this morning, of this handcuffed figure, his features blurred by 30 hours of detention and questioning, but still proud.
What I know as well is that nothing, no earthly law, should also allow another woman, his wife, admirable in her love and courage, to be exposed to the slime of a public opinion drunk on salacious gossip and driven by who knows what obscure vengeance.
And what I know even more is that the Strauss-Kahn I know, who has been my friend for 20 years and who will remain my friend, bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast now being described nearly everywhere. Charming, seductive, yes, certainly; a friend to women and, first of all, to his own woman, naturally, but this brutal and violent individual, this wild animal, this primate, obviously no, it’s absurd.
This morning, I hold it against the American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.
I am troubled by a system of justice modestly termed “accusatory,” meaning that anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime.
I am troubled by a system of justice modestly termed “accusatory,” meaning that anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime—and it will be up to the accused to prove that the accusation is false and without basis in fact.
I resent the New York tabloid press, a disgrace to the profession, that, without the least precaution and before having effected the least verification, has depicted Dominique Strauss-Kahn as a sicko, a pervert, borderlining on serial killer, a psychiatrist’s dream.
I am angry with all those in France who jumped at the occasion to settle old scores or further their own little affairs.
And I hold it against the commentators, pundits, and other minor figures of a French political class overjoyed at this divine surprise who immediately, indecently, and at the very first opportunity commenced with their de Profundis drivel by talking about a “redistribution of the cards” or a “new deal” at the center of this or of that. But I must stop here, for it makes me nauseous.
I’m angry with, to name one, the French M.P. Bernard Debré, who comes right out and denounces a man he calls “disreputable,” one who “wallows in sex” and has conducted himself, for a long time now, like a “scoundrel.”
I hold it against all those who complacently accept the account of this other young woman, this one French, who pretends to have been the victim of the same kind of attempted rape, who has shut up for eight years but, sensing the golden opportunity, whips out her old dossier and comes to flog it on television.
And I am, of course, dismayed at the political impact of the event.
The French left that, if Strauss-Kahn were really out of the arena, would lose its champion.
France, that has counted him among her most devoted and competent servants for so many years.
And Europe, not to say the world, that is indebted to him for contributing, for the past four years at the head of the IMF, to avoiding the worst.
On one side, there were the hardline ultraliberals, partisans of rigorous plans, without modulation or nuance, and on the other, those who, Dominique Strauss-Kahn at their head, had begun to implement rules of the game that were less lenient toward the powerful, more favorable to proletarian nations and, among the latter, to the most fragile and vulnerable.
He was arrested just hours before the meeting during which he would face a more orthodox German chancellor to plead the cause of a country, Greece, that he believed could be brought back to order without being brought to its knees. His defeat would also be that of this great cause. It would be a disaster for this entire part of Europe and of the world, because the IMF, under his leadership and for the first time in its history, did not intend to sell out to the superior interests of Finance. And that would really be a dreadful sign.
Me (from a thread on this):
Interesting it is to read Levi's Beast piece and then the analyses of it here.
His piece goes all over the place starting from a modest acknowledgment of his unknowing of what happened to a decent point about media and political overreaction to a florid, rapturous, self inflating j'accuse Cri de Coeur, which has as its unstated but real underpinning that this man--a gift from the goods to the left, to France, to Europe--could not have done these things.
I typically find BHL both to say stupid, elitist things and to wallow in sheer overwrtiting and overstatement often to the point of incomprehensibility. For examples, his indefensible this, which others are correct to adduce as evidence of his elitist, dense insufferability:
...This morning, I hold it against the American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other...
and this:
...I am troubled by a system of justice modestly termed “accusatory,” meaning that anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime—and it will be up to the accused to prove that the accusation is false and without basis in fact...
with the latter needing to be read in the typical context of serious, good faith police investigation, the operation of serious, good faith prosecutorial discretion before arrest and indictment and the plain fact that the preponderant majority of those arrested and charged are guilty.
The argument justifying BHL's Beastly piece as a properly read complaint against before-the-fact condemnation and media-driven sensationalism has a real point but, it, finally, neither comprehends the entirety of what BHL says nor his inanities along the way.
I'm going to relax and drink a spiked lemonade now on a hot, humid day in my town and then I'm going to dig up and read what BHL had to say about Polanski. If it's true that he defended Polanski in the name of art, or some like such, I'm going to get hot and bothered all over again over such pompous idiocy thinking itself profound, let alone correct.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Continuous vs. Continual
"Continuous" and "continual" aren't the same.
Both describe duration.
"Continuous" is without interruptions.
"Continual " is with interruptions.
"Continuously" and "continually" preserve this distinction.
Both describe duration.
"Continuous" is without interruptions.
"Continual " is with interruptions.
"Continuously" and "continually" preserve this distinction.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Superb Short Piece by Aaron David Miller on Hamas Fatah Accords
Circus of the Dancing Bears
Aaron David Miller Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Foreign Policy
The late Yitzhak Rabin used to say that the only problem with dancing with a bear is that once you start, you can never let go.
Watching the current Hamas-Fatah unity circus, I can't help but think of Rabin's comment. For the former Israeli prime minister, Yasir Arafat was the bear and the Oslo process was their choreographed dance. Rabin was no sentimentalist and he recognized Arafat's many weaknesses as a partner, but he continued to engage with him because he believed his counterpart had taken tough positions. Oslo was a good faith effort to achieve a goal.
The Hamas-Fatah unity gambit signed on Wednesday in Cairo isn't about good faith, consequential agreements, nor is it about peacemaking. The forging of Palestinian unity is a product of narrower calculations of two key parties -- Fatah and Hamas -- who are looking for a way to improve their respective positions during a very turbulent and uncertain period. This is an instance of two bears dancing with one another. Israel is right to be wary...
Read the rest here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/04/circus_of_the_dancing_bears
Aaron David Miller Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Foreign Policy
The late Yitzhak Rabin used to say that the only problem with dancing with a bear is that once you start, you can never let go.
Watching the current Hamas-Fatah unity circus, I can't help but think of Rabin's comment. For the former Israeli prime minister, Yasir Arafat was the bear and the Oslo process was their choreographed dance. Rabin was no sentimentalist and he recognized Arafat's many weaknesses as a partner, but he continued to engage with him because he believed his counterpart had taken tough positions. Oslo was a good faith effort to achieve a goal.
The Hamas-Fatah unity gambit signed on Wednesday in Cairo isn't about good faith, consequential agreements, nor is it about peacemaking. The forging of Palestinian unity is a product of narrower calculations of two key parties -- Fatah and Hamas -- who are looking for a way to improve their respective positions during a very turbulent and uncertain period. This is an instance of two bears dancing with one another. Israel is right to be wary...
Read the rest here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/04/circus_of_the_dancing_bears
Gone Postal: A Poem By Me
Gone Postal
They say, “He went postal,
right off his route,
right off all the sorting,
stacking, filing, slotting,
precisely organizing,
then delivering.”
They say, “For a while there,
he went glassy-eyed,
immobile, paralyzed.
Then he:
slung letters, postcards, packages
all over the place;
prostrated postal apple carts;
and stormed away,
sceaming at himself,
at others,
at the world.”
Of that they say,
“Good thing we’re not
postal people,
so able
to get gone
so postal.”
They say, “He went postal,
right off his route,
right off all the sorting,
stacking, filing, slotting,
precisely organizing,
then delivering.”
They say, “For a while there,
he went glassy-eyed,
immobile, paralyzed.
Then he:
slung letters, postcards, packages
all over the place;
prostrated postal apple carts;
and stormed away,
sceaming at himself,
at others,
at the world.”
Of that they say,
“Good thing we’re not
postal people,
so able
to get gone
so postal.”
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
An Argument For Paul Ryan's Moral Barbarism
Paul Ryan's Moral Barbarism
Jonathan Chait/May 3, 2011/TNR
Karl Rove's column the other day joined the many conservatives expressing their hurt and anger that President Obama would depict Paul Ryan's budget as harming sick and vulnerable citizens:
...Mr. Obama likes campaigning more than governing. And for this president, campaigning means knocking down straw men and delivering a steady stream of misleading attacks. It means depicting opponents as indecent, heartless people who take special delight in targeting seniors and autistic children...
In fact, Obama has never accused Ryan, or anybody, of having a "special delight" in targetting seniors and autistic children. But he has accused them of pursuing policies that would harm, among others, seniors and autistic children.
That's because it's incontrovertably true.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities delves into the details of Ryan's plan to slash Medicaid by more than a third over the next decade, and in half over the next two decades:
Seniors: An overwhelming majority of Medicare beneficiaries who live in nursing homes rely on Medicaid for their nursing home coverage. Because the Ryan plan would require such deep cuts in federal Medicaid funding, it would inevitably result in less coverage for nursing home residents and shift more of the cost of nursing home care to elderly beneficiaries and their families. A sharp reduction in the quality of nursing home care would be virtually inevitable, due to the large reduction that would occur in the resources made available to pay for such care.
People with disabilities: These individuals constitute 15 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries but account for 42 percent of all Medicaid expenditures, mostly because of their extensive health and long-term care needs. Capping federal Medicaid funding would place significant financial pressure on states to scale back eligibility and coverage for this high-cost population, many of whom would be unable to obtain coverage elsewhere because of their medical conditions.
Children: Currently, state Medicaid programs must provide children with health care services and treatments they need for their healthy development through the Early Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) aspect of Medicaid, which provides regular preventive care for children and all follow-up diagnostic and treatment services that children are found to need. A block grant would likely permit states to drop EPSDT coverage, meaning that children, particularly those with special health care needs, would not be able to access some care that medical professionals find they need (because Medicaid would no longer cover certain health services and treatments for children, and their parents wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for that care on their own).
Working parents and pregnant women: Many state Medicaid programs already have extremely restrictive eligibility criteria for parents. In the typical state, working parents are ineligible for Medicaid if their income exceeds 64 percent of the poverty line (or $14,304 a year for a family of four), and unemployed parents are ineligible if their income exceeds 37 percent of the poverty line ($8,270 a year for a family of four). Under a block grant, states could cut these already low eligibility levels even further, cap enrollment, and/or require low-income parents to pay more for health services. States could do the same for low-income pregnant women who rely on Medicaid for their prenatal care, resulting in them forgoing services that are critical to ensuring a healthy pregnancy.
Now, Rove appears to be a pathological liar, or at least so deeply enmeshed in partisan spin it's not clear that a distinction exists in his mind between objective truth and claims that are useful to his side. But many other conservatives have likewise expressed what has the ring of genuine outrage that
Obama would accuse Ryan of snatching medical care away from people in nursing homes, very poor families, special needs children, and so on. I think it reflects, in part, an inability or lack of desire to think with any specificty about the concrete ramifications of imposing extremely deep cuts to Medicaid.
Who do they think is on Medicaid? Prosperous, healthy people?
No, Medicaid is a bare-bones program throwing a lifeline to people who are in bad shape. Cutting Medicaid may be the politically easiest way for Ryan to clear budget room to preserve Bush-era revenue levels, as Medicaid patients have little political clout. But it is, well, deeply immoral.
I'm actually surprised that conservatives not only can't seem to imagine (or care about) the consequences of such policies, but they can't even imagine that people like Obama would actually feel moral outrage at their plan.
They can't imagine a liberal objection as representing anything other than an attempt to score political points. It's bizarre. I mean, of course Obama finds it morally objectionable to take away medical care to people in nursing homes and children with special needs. That's why he's a Democrat.
Jonathan Chait/May 3, 2011/TNR
Karl Rove's column the other day joined the many conservatives expressing their hurt and anger that President Obama would depict Paul Ryan's budget as harming sick and vulnerable citizens:
...Mr. Obama likes campaigning more than governing. And for this president, campaigning means knocking down straw men and delivering a steady stream of misleading attacks. It means depicting opponents as indecent, heartless people who take special delight in targeting seniors and autistic children...
In fact, Obama has never accused Ryan, or anybody, of having a "special delight" in targetting seniors and autistic children. But he has accused them of pursuing policies that would harm, among others, seniors and autistic children.
That's because it's incontrovertably true.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities delves into the details of Ryan's plan to slash Medicaid by more than a third over the next decade, and in half over the next two decades:
Seniors: An overwhelming majority of Medicare beneficiaries who live in nursing homes rely on Medicaid for their nursing home coverage. Because the Ryan plan would require such deep cuts in federal Medicaid funding, it would inevitably result in less coverage for nursing home residents and shift more of the cost of nursing home care to elderly beneficiaries and their families. A sharp reduction in the quality of nursing home care would be virtually inevitable, due to the large reduction that would occur in the resources made available to pay for such care.
People with disabilities: These individuals constitute 15 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries but account for 42 percent of all Medicaid expenditures, mostly because of their extensive health and long-term care needs. Capping federal Medicaid funding would place significant financial pressure on states to scale back eligibility and coverage for this high-cost population, many of whom would be unable to obtain coverage elsewhere because of their medical conditions.
Children: Currently, state Medicaid programs must provide children with health care services and treatments they need for their healthy development through the Early Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) aspect of Medicaid, which provides regular preventive care for children and all follow-up diagnostic and treatment services that children are found to need. A block grant would likely permit states to drop EPSDT coverage, meaning that children, particularly those with special health care needs, would not be able to access some care that medical professionals find they need (because Medicaid would no longer cover certain health services and treatments for children, and their parents wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for that care on their own).
Working parents and pregnant women: Many state Medicaid programs already have extremely restrictive eligibility criteria for parents. In the typical state, working parents are ineligible for Medicaid if their income exceeds 64 percent of the poverty line (or $14,304 a year for a family of four), and unemployed parents are ineligible if their income exceeds 37 percent of the poverty line ($8,270 a year for a family of four). Under a block grant, states could cut these already low eligibility levels even further, cap enrollment, and/or require low-income parents to pay more for health services. States could do the same for low-income pregnant women who rely on Medicaid for their prenatal care, resulting in them forgoing services that are critical to ensuring a healthy pregnancy.
Now, Rove appears to be a pathological liar, or at least so deeply enmeshed in partisan spin it's not clear that a distinction exists in his mind between objective truth and claims that are useful to his side. But many other conservatives have likewise expressed what has the ring of genuine outrage that
Obama would accuse Ryan of snatching medical care away from people in nursing homes, very poor families, special needs children, and so on. I think it reflects, in part, an inability or lack of desire to think with any specificty about the concrete ramifications of imposing extremely deep cuts to Medicaid.
Who do they think is on Medicaid? Prosperous, healthy people?
No, Medicaid is a bare-bones program throwing a lifeline to people who are in bad shape. Cutting Medicaid may be the politically easiest way for Ryan to clear budget room to preserve Bush-era revenue levels, as Medicaid patients have little political clout. But it is, well, deeply immoral.
I'm actually surprised that conservatives not only can't seem to imagine (or care about) the consequences of such policies, but they can't even imagine that people like Obama would actually feel moral outrage at their plan.
They can't imagine a liberal objection as representing anything other than an attempt to score political points. It's bizarre. I mean, of course Obama finds it morally objectionable to take away medical care to people in nursing homes and children with special needs. That's why he's a Democrat.
Legal Basis For Killing OLB
The legal justification, explained.
James Downie
May 3, 2011 TNR
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have long criticized the Bush and Obama administrations’ prosecution of the “War on Terror.” The two human rights groups have consistently pointed out sovereignty and human rights violations by the United States on issues ranging from black sites to drone strikes.
But today, in the wake of American special forces’ raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, both organizations merely noted that bin Laden had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. But what about questions of national sovereignty and civilian casualties? And, more to the point, was it legal to kill bin Laden in the first place?
“There are targeted killing issues where the legal background is complicated,” says Brookings fellow (and New Republic contributor) Benjamin Wittes. But, as it turns out, “[t]his isn’t one of them.”
One week after the September 11 attacks, Wittes explains, President George W. Bush signed Public Law 107-40, in which Congress authorized the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”
No one fit this description more closely than Osama bin Laden. (By contrast, the NATO missile strike in Tripoli that allegedly killed Muammar Qaddafi’s son Seif Al Arab and three of his young grandchildren this past weekend has elicited greater controversy, because the U.N. resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya, among many other differences from 107-40, did not include an authorization of force against Qaddafi or his family.)
Still, some legal scholars have pointed to the thorny interpretational issues surrounding Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, which prohibited the U.S. from “engag[ing] in, or conspiring to engage in, assassination.”
But Reagan’s advisers at the time, and the majority of scholars since, have interpreted E.O. 12333 as only applying in peacetime and not after a force authorization such as the one signed by Bush in 2001.
The question of whether the United States violated Pakistan’s sovereignty, on the other hand, is somewhat more nebulous, Wittes admits. This is due in part to the fact that the public doesn’t have a clear idea about what kind of understanding the two countries share.
Because of the lack of settled international law on the subject, Pakistan could decide, once it was informed, whether or not to retroactively consent.
Fortunately, Pakistan did not object.
James Downie is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic
James Downie
May 3, 2011 TNR
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have long criticized the Bush and Obama administrations’ prosecution of the “War on Terror.” The two human rights groups have consistently pointed out sovereignty and human rights violations by the United States on issues ranging from black sites to drone strikes.
But today, in the wake of American special forces’ raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, both organizations merely noted that bin Laden had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. But what about questions of national sovereignty and civilian casualties? And, more to the point, was it legal to kill bin Laden in the first place?
“There are targeted killing issues where the legal background is complicated,” says Brookings fellow (and New Republic contributor) Benjamin Wittes. But, as it turns out, “[t]his isn’t one of them.”
One week after the September 11 attacks, Wittes explains, President George W. Bush signed Public Law 107-40, in which Congress authorized the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”
No one fit this description more closely than Osama bin Laden. (By contrast, the NATO missile strike in Tripoli that allegedly killed Muammar Qaddafi’s son Seif Al Arab and three of his young grandchildren this past weekend has elicited greater controversy, because the U.N. resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya, among many other differences from 107-40, did not include an authorization of force against Qaddafi or his family.)
Still, some legal scholars have pointed to the thorny interpretational issues surrounding Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, which prohibited the U.S. from “engag[ing] in, or conspiring to engage in, assassination.”
But Reagan’s advisers at the time, and the majority of scholars since, have interpreted E.O. 12333 as only applying in peacetime and not after a force authorization such as the one signed by Bush in 2001.
The question of whether the United States violated Pakistan’s sovereignty, on the other hand, is somewhat more nebulous, Wittes admits. This is due in part to the fact that the public doesn’t have a clear idea about what kind of understanding the two countries share.
Because of the lack of settled international law on the subject, Pakistan could decide, once it was informed, whether or not to retroactively consent.
Fortunately, Pakistan did not object.
James Downie is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic
Excellent Synoptic Take On How Obama the Pol Repudiated Obama the Campaigner in Killing OBL
President Obama Deserves the Nobel Prize After All
Emanuele Ottolenghi 05.03.2011/Contentions
Let’s face it—President Obama is starting to deserve the Nobel Prize he received in December 2009, although it is unlikely that this is what the mild-mannered Norwegians had in mind in awarding it to him.
Obama promised to close Guantanamo—no doubt a factor for the Nobel Committee. Yet Guantanamo is still there, and we now know that it was intelligence dug up at Guantanamo that led to Osama bin Laden’s liquidation.
Before becoming president, Obama was an anti-war candidate—yet he ordered the surge in Afghanistan, expanded the aggressive use of predator-drone strikes on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border, and endorsed the Libya no-fly zone. Again, probably not what the Committee had in mind.
Speaking of which—the killing of Osama bin Laden is the kind of extrajudicial killings (I prefer the more sanguine “targeted assassinations”) that invariably secures condemnation for Israel at the UN Human Rights Council, the European Parliament, and other august institutions whose mind-set is on the same wavelength as the Nobel Committee. Can you imagine Ariel Sharon’s winning the Nobel Prize for having Sheikh Ahmed Yassin eliminated? Obama’s dispatching of Osama bin Laden to the flaming depths of hell is not the first instance of this president ordering the termination of a jihadist (see under: drones, above). With any luck, it will not be the last time either.
Finally, Obama was the multilateralist president—respectful of international law, keen on the UN, open to dialogue, ready for negotiation, mindful of the sensitivities of other cultures and countries. One more reason for the Nobel Peace Prize. How does his reputation for multilateralism square with conducting such a daring military operation without even asking permission to Pakistan—the fugitive’s host country?
Obama’s first, magnificent foreign-policy success resulted from going against all the reasons that probably brought him the Prize in the first place. Good on him—and a vote of thanks to America and its firepower, still the best guarantees for making the world a safer place
Emanuele Ottolenghi 05.03.2011/Contentions
Let’s face it—President Obama is starting to deserve the Nobel Prize he received in December 2009, although it is unlikely that this is what the mild-mannered Norwegians had in mind in awarding it to him.
Obama promised to close Guantanamo—no doubt a factor for the Nobel Committee. Yet Guantanamo is still there, and we now know that it was intelligence dug up at Guantanamo that led to Osama bin Laden’s liquidation.
Before becoming president, Obama was an anti-war candidate—yet he ordered the surge in Afghanistan, expanded the aggressive use of predator-drone strikes on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border, and endorsed the Libya no-fly zone. Again, probably not what the Committee had in mind.
Speaking of which—the killing of Osama bin Laden is the kind of extrajudicial killings (I prefer the more sanguine “targeted assassinations”) that invariably secures condemnation for Israel at the UN Human Rights Council, the European Parliament, and other august institutions whose mind-set is on the same wavelength as the Nobel Committee. Can you imagine Ariel Sharon’s winning the Nobel Prize for having Sheikh Ahmed Yassin eliminated? Obama’s dispatching of Osama bin Laden to the flaming depths of hell is not the first instance of this president ordering the termination of a jihadist (see under: drones, above). With any luck, it will not be the last time either.
Finally, Obama was the multilateralist president—respectful of international law, keen on the UN, open to dialogue, ready for negotiation, mindful of the sensitivities of other cultures and countries. One more reason for the Nobel Peace Prize. How does his reputation for multilateralism square with conducting such a daring military operation without even asking permission to Pakistan—the fugitive’s host country?
Obama’s first, magnificent foreign-policy success resulted from going against all the reasons that probably brought him the Prize in the first place. Good on him—and a vote of thanks to America and its firepower, still the best guarantees for making the world a safer place
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